Maps are so lovely

Who wants a map of all the US military bases in the middle east?  How about just those military bases that surround Iran then. Done.

Someone should compile these

With the news that we have already lost 20 percent of the live information created on social media sites for the Libya uprising, (normally you would Touch Me but damn if I can't find this link but unlike some websites who put up broken links pretending like it is a link to a real source when it wasn't, I swear I read it somewhere recently.  how about just stroll through disinfo.com for a few pages.  Sounds like something they would be into and if not, you are still going to see some great stories) it is time for us to really start logging and cataloging information so that when The Man takes things down, we will still have it.  I suggest we start with someone starting a blog maybe that compiles the last paragraph of each news article that might carry a deeper meaning than the headline grabbing topic at the topic.  We could, for instance, start with this little diddy about the invasion of female suicide bombers being dispatched from Yemen (Touch Me).  The article paints the horror story idea that Yemenize (?) females are being sent around the globe (on planes of course) to blow some poor unsuspecting rich country peoples sky high.  Terror Terror Terror.  Red Alert.  What the article also holds is some very peculiar information about another popular "suicide bomber".  Do you remember the Christmas day bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab?  Oh, what a bastard for messing up the birth of our Lord (Touch Me).  Well, some people at the scene, Kurt and Lori Haskell, said that they saw the terrorist before boarding the plane and he wasn't alone (Touch Me) (I don't care it is a wiki link or not. it has sources, use them).  Of course, this was ridiculous and outlandish and all the other words one can lob at another person to ensure everyone thinks they are crazy.  Well, maybe not so crazy after all because at the end of the Female bomber's article is one little throw away paragraph that makes the situation some kinds of murky (Touch Me) (Page 2 last paragraph). Why toss that in there, just hiding there at the bottom?  I know I read to the bottom of every article (insert sarcastic sound here).  
Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man have played a role to make sure Abdulmutallab "did not get cold feet."

Things to learn things to wipe from your memory

English scientists claim to have discovered how tigers and other animals got their stripes (Touch Me).  It seems a 60 year old study done by researcher Alan Turing showed in his paper The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis that animal's stripes and spots are caused by the interaction of a pair of chemicals named "morphogens".  
Anyone want some lab meat (Touch Me).  Dutch scientists are using stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue that they hope will be able to grow lab hamburger meat by the end of the year.  Well, that is, if 2012 hasn't swallowed us whole by then.
Let's rebuild a boat (Touch Me).  Archaeologists in Egypt have begun the process of restoring a really old (they say 4500 year old) boat housed in the Pyramid complex.  This is one of two boats found in the area directly beside one of the pyramids.  Some say the boats were placed by the temples (not tombs) to give the dead a way to travel around in the afterlife.  Now, the boat, once completed, will bring lots of tourist eyes to see and continue the tradition of iffy historical data that we all have come to know and love. 
How about a fun little graph about prices and have they have increased since 2000 (Touch Me).  That will sure lift your spirits.  I really like the college one.  That makes complete sense.  Wink Wink.

Sometimes, I feel this way

links today courtesy of The London Telegraph, BBC News, The AP, and Business Insider

I love tandems

And boy do I have a team for you today.  A few weeks back, a suspicious package arrived at the United Nations in New York.  Come to find out, said package contained two 30 pound bundles of cocaine (Touch Me).  Now that is some kind of diplomatic love.  The package was said to be designed like a diplomatic pouch but apparently, "terrorists" can't do everything right as the package looked amateurish at best (Touch Me).  So, what would one drug story be without the other.  Yesterday, Lebanon officials seized suspicious cargo upon its arrival at the Beirut airport (Touch Me).  The package contained a large cache of american dollars (see China, someone still uses our currency), guns, special passports, and credit cards (that were assumed not to be from a college student that signed up for every credit card offer they got in the mail).  The packages came in as several chests and were delivered by airmail from the United States and Brazil.  Included was also a list of of Lebanon citizens as well as people from the Salafi extremist group.  Well, I guess when TSA runs off all the airline passengers, there will still be a need for some things to fly the friendly skies.  

photo courtesy of makes me laugh

links courtesy of standard.net and newsrescue.com

Urgh You

It's a finger, not a penis and oh by the way, a penis isn't that bad either.  Body parts.  Body parts.  You make them carry your own personal demon meanings.  You stop that and fingers can go back to being just fingers.  And in case you were wondering if a digit can really be that offense, how about go over to flipthatbird and suck it the fuck up.

UFC 143 Diaz vs Condit

In a battle of street fighters versus game planner, Carlos Condit bested Nick Diaz to claim the interim welterweight championship Saturday night at UFC 143.  Using a master strategy created by Greg Jackson,  Carlos Condit ducked, dodged, and leg kicked Diaz to a unanimous 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 victory. 

“He was talking, I was landing punches,” Condit said after and while Nick Diaz is never in a fight where he isn’t talking, Carlos was able to not allow himself to be suckered into the Diaz school yard bully technique.  The plan for Carlos was to keep distance and stay out of exchanges on the cage which, short of a few brief moments, Condit was able to use his defense boxing skills to do just that.

“I pushed this guy backwards the whole time.  He ran from me this whole fight,” Nick Diaz told Joe Rogan after his first loss in twelve outings.  “I landed the harder shots.  He kicked my leg with little baby kicks the whole fight.”  Of course, in MMA, just as in boxing, when a fight goes to the judges, it really does depend on the points a fight scores during the fight so connecting with more than half a hundred leg kicks is going to account for a lot of points.  Point wins like this are a Greg Jackson specialty that is good enough t o even propel a fighter like Keith Jardine to beat the likes of Hall of Famer Chuck Lidddell.

In the co-headline fight of the night, Febricio Werdum used and abused Big Country Roy Nelson in route to an easy decision.  Working a solid inside game and a face to knee plum clinch that threatened to send Nelson’s nose into the first few rows, Werdum went a long way to erasing his lay and invite technique that he utilized against Allistair Overeem in his last outing.  Febricio’s striking will never be on the level of Junior Dos Santos, who’s striking is really, but he did show that his basics are improving and maybe when he gets another shot at one of the big dogs of the division, he can make it on the feet long enough to have a chance to take the fight into his wheelhouse and show the skills that he used to bring down the Last Emperor.  In defeat, Roy Nelson reminded everyone how hard a noggin he has but showed little else to convince anyone that Big Country is anything other than a middle tier fighter.  The Mullet Wonder will continue to have entertaining fights almost every time he steps into the cage but if his dream is still UFC gold, he might want to talk to Chael Sonnen about where he got his belt from.

picture courtesy of  sherdog.com

    

Friday means...

...that someone somewhere is getting drunk and reminiscing about ABC's TGFI tv lineup.  With that in mind you nostalgic mofo's, let's relieve the week of the one that just past.


In an all things from the great beyond story, astronomers have found a fourth potentially habitable planet outside of our solar system.  The planet, only 22 light years from earth, is located near enough t a M-class dwarf star that it appears to have a temperature reasonable enough to sustain water and in turn, support life as we know it (Touch Me).   
The inmates from St. Albans Vermont have a very sly sense of humor (Touch Me).  Just a little chuckle for the years of hard time spent in the tough confines of Vermont.  
Monsanto is fucking bees.  What a surprise (Touch Me)!
A Harvard professor has created a model that shows how the slight shifts in the Earth's axis could be enough to create an ice age (Touch Me).  Damn you and your real data Harvard.  Where is the faith.  Faith!
The do not fly list (eyes rolled) has doubled in the last year (Touch Me).   If terrorist are doubling their numbers every year in a continual effort to do the exact same thing that they did (or were used a the face of) a few years ago, well first, they should really start using condoms (ha, Catholic joke inside a terrorist discussion.  shaky ground here).  And second, I believe that means that in another ten years, everyone will be terrorists and then what?  Is there really that many virgins up there (I know that is an outdated terrorist reference.  It has been shown that the idea is a good one for news stories but not an actual goal of most extremists) (because the extremists know that they have time in America before the plane goes kablooie to check mark off the list a few of their personal to do's before saying goodbye) (Touch Me).  
And with multiple stories, it is hard to really pick a favorite story for a picture so this week, I bring you an artist I love.  

(Touch Me)

David Jien

http://davidjien.com/